Paved Paradise

“Paved Paradise”, the song ( is going to be the theme of this group of essays, so enjoy it.  It’s a great song, the video is nice (the lyrics can be found in part one), and the ideas behind it fit with the things I want to say.  So, listen and sing along.  Then read what’s next.

What’s next?  Why the country (the US of A) is going to shit, why it’s good for us, and who’s to blame.

What’s wrong with our country?  It seems to be, well, coming apart at the seams.  The War against Terrorism (GWOT), George W. Bush (our worst President in recent history), partisanship, polarization and ideologists taking over the media and politics, fear and warmongering, the housing crisis, Katrina and the disaster that is still New Orleans, wildfires and floods, the War in Iraq, the 2008 Presidential election, and let’s not forget gas prices.  Can we come up with anything else?  I’m sure we can, but these are the things that have most everyone up in arms and saying we are going to Hell in a handbasket.

And yet, there’s another way to look at this.  I say it’s good for us.  It’s about time we woke the fuck up and got a god-damned clue, don’t you?

What do I mean this is good for us?  Well, I won’t go into very specific details here, but I will address each of these problems individually along the way, as these essays continue.  What I will say is that while in my initial blog (part one), I stated how nice it was for me to ‘wake up’, or become ‘conscious’, I think that, as a result of all these major problems, a lot of people are going to finally wake up, too.  This sudden on-rush of calamities is our fault, and now we are paying for being dumb, ignorant and asleep at the wheel.

Wake up, America!!  While you were out shopping at fucking Target, deciding which combination of ingredients makes the perfect cup of coffee, and obsessing over whether or not Brett Favre should retire, your country is being ruled by people who don’t give a fuck about you and are driving your country into a ditch!  And it’s your fault!!!

No, this is not a ‘bash George Bush’ or ‘I’m a hippie liberal’ blog.  This is, ironically, a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ blog.  (And no, it’s definitely not Starbucks’ coffee — I hate Starbucks and everything is stands for.)

This blog is about you and me.  And I hate to break it to you — this just in, ladies and gentlemen of America, but your country is falling apart because you are too fucking busy ‘living the good life’ to care.  And now, suddenly, everything is going to shit, and you don’t know why.
America has ceased to be the land of the free and home of the brave.  America is now the land of the consumer, the bastion of leisure, and champion of entertainment.  Look at our lifestyles.  Look at our economy.  Our economy is shifting quickly.  We actually make fewer and fewer goods; rather we are becoming an economy based on services.  And the majority of those services revolve around leisure and luxury.  Coffee shops, massage parlors, grand grocery stores, car detailers, outlets, strip malls, luxury gyms.  Being pampered is the key to being American now, and anyone who is not successful enough to be able to afford some pampering is striving to be so.  Affording luxury is now the #1 goal in America.

Even the news is no longer ‘newsy’; it is “infotainment”, 24 hours of sensationalism that is designed to bring you the ‘news’ in a way that keeps you enthralled and entertained.  News, my friends, is business, and they have to make it look good — just like Hollywood, just like Target, just like Wegman’s (a really nice, upscale grocery), just like Myspace.  CNN and Fox preach death and destruction, tell you that the terrorists are right on your doorstep, rail that the Neo-Cons or the Liberals are going to get you.  They sow fear and hate and division.  They divide and conquer, and we are all so busy running around with our little bullshit lives, hurry to soccer practice or getting back to our Tivo’d episode of “Lost”, that we don’t have time to think for ourselves.  We let Lou Dobbs do the thinking for us.

CNN, Fox, Walmart, TGIFridays, Hollywood, Time-Warner, Starbucks, McDonalds, Best Buy — what do all these things have in common?  They tell us what we want.  They tell us what to think.  They tell us who we are.  They are the reason Americans get up in the morning and what our world revolves around.  We use name brands to define ourselves now, not thoughts and deeds.  Instead of seeking to improve our own being, we seek to pleasure ourselves and entertain ourselves and luxurize our lives.  We no longer try to think for ourselves; we seek direction 24/7, and we can now thanks to cable and the internet.  We no longer need to think for ourselves — we have people to do that for us.  We are no longer the land of the free and home of the brave, we are now just enjoying life and going through the motions.  Our lives prove this to us everyday.  We just live in a fantasy land with well-placed ads.

Then suddenly gas prices skyrocket.  Suddenly the housing market sinks.  We are in a terrible war against an enemy that we are coincidentally helping create by our own actions.  We are suffereing from disasters, natural and economic, that we created out of our greed, sloth, and pride.  When did all this happen, you ask?  Why?  Where was I?  Who’s responsible?
I’ll answer these questions and more in the following blogs, but let me give you a brief answer now:  this all happened while you were playing Xbox, America.  You turned this whole country over to politicians with agendas and corporate America.  You quit paying attention, stop getting involved, and closed yourself off in your snappy little suburban McMansions.  America, you are numb, dumb, and soulless.  Your country is going to shit, and it’s your own damn fault.

It’s time to start fixing some of this bullshit, but most of you don’t know how.  So, right now, wake up and smell the coffee.